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Keep it Simple

James A. DeSena, MBA, CSP

 

Life is complicated enough. Avoid these time wasters.

It all began with one of those pesky telemarketing calls in the evening from one of the businesses my family uses. I declined to take them up on their "free" offer, in which I would have received a $15 dollar check, but it got me thinking. If I had, I would have had 30 days to decide if I wanted to continue with their service. If I didn't, which was likely, I would have to call them and stop the service. But if I didn't call, they would have started charging a monthly fee. Then at some point, I would have called anyway. All the time, I would spend some amount of time thinking about calling. Would it really have been worth my time? Did I really need this? No. This would have been an unimportant thing to think about that would have wasted time and, more significantly, would have been a distraction.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of getting involved with too many things that take too much time and don't give us much value. Perhaps you're the type of person who is able to resist the "free" offers and who keeps things simple. If not, you have a lot of company.

Look around your business. Look around your home. Do you get too many magazines? Have too many electronic gadgets that are difficult to learn or time consuming when they don't work? Have products you purchased that you don't use? Do you find that things accumulate, that you have a lot of stuff that seems to expand to fill the available space? What do you have too much of? We live in a world that invites, entices, even tries to make us feel guilty, if we don't take advantage of every offer that comes along.

Every time we purchase something, we spend time doing it. Put aside the money for now. Just think about the time. The more you do this, the more time it takes from you. And the unique thing about time is that it is irreplaceable. Once it's gone, you can never get it back. The time you spend on these things may be just a moment or two here and there, or five or ten minutes here or there, but they add up. And again, and more importantly, they take your focus off of what may be more important and more valuable activities.

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